Let's say you're using the toilet and as you get up, but before you flush, you realize your CharlieCard has somehow fallen into the bowl. Do you retrieve it?

ArsTechnica reports Dutch researchers claim to have broken the encryption used to protect information on CharlieCards and similar systems:

... The group at Radboud carried out its investigation with the help of Ghost, a tag emulator, reader, and eavesdrop device that they built for around 40 euros. ...

The company that makes the CharlieCard system has come out with a more secure encryption system, but it's more expensive and making it backwards compatible with older readers actually introduces more vulnerabilities, ArsTechnica writes.

Maybe a slight exaggeration, but this completely caught me off guard. Charlie Card = Discount Card, and the discounts aren't bad at all.

"Just show your CharlieCard to save!

Take a look through our new CharlieCard Discount Book below - it's packed with deals you can't pass up - from arts and entertainment options, restaurants, retail stores, health and fitness services, and more! Plus, most of the listings are easily accessible by the T.

-If you don't have a CharlieCard, you can purchase a pre-loaded card here, pick one up from our MBTA Customer Service Agent, or get one at our T sales offices at Back Bay, Downtown Crossing, Harvard, North Station and South Station. And start enjoying great service and great deals while using your CharlieCard!"

www.mbta.com/riding_the_t/CharlieCard_Discount_Book/

And please no bitching about how the MBTA could have used the money elsewhere, it's likely this didn't cost them a dime.

Seems the software behind CharlieCard readers was built in Microsoft Visual C++. And guess what? It's not immune from crashing. Zeroday posts the photographic proof from the Central Square station.

Associated Press reports they can now talk about their own documents, the ones the MBTA put into the public record, on insecurity at T stations and with the CharlieCard and CharlieTicket system.

Via Dave Wieneke.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: The Court found that the MBTA was not likely to prevail on the merits of its claim under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Dan Kennedy: [N]ot much of a victory for the First Amendment:

... It makes a mockery of the principle that prior restraint is to be reserved only serious issues of national security, obscenity and incitement to violence.

EVIL MIT HACKER steathily infiltrates the T with EVIL MIT HACKER SHOPPING CART (Source).

In focusing on the OMG EVIL MIT HACKERS angle (but also, to give them credit, the First Amendment/prior restraint angle), the media are completely overlooking the first part of the students' presentation, which discusses how easy it is to get on the T for free without using EVIL MIT HACKER WAREZ, such as, for example: Walking through unattended Charliegates and Green Line rear doors, looking through the windows in those high-tech all-seeing security kiosks, walking into unlocked rooms at Park Street that house switches connecting Charliegates to the MBTA network, etc. In case you missed it, Kaz has more.

For some reason, Dan Grabauskas doesn't seem upset about this, or maybe reporters just aren't asking him about it, because it's not as sexay as OMG EVIL MIT HACKERS or they haven't actually read the presentation themselves, or both.

UPDATE: The MBTA won a temporary restraining order that will keep the students from discussing their findings. Read the judge's order (in PDF). Read the MBTA complaint (in PDF).

Wired reports the T wants to stop three MIT students from giving a talk at a hacker convention this weekend on their efforts to crack the CharlieCard system.

The transit authority, known as the MBTA, is also seeking to prevent the students from "publicly stating or indicating" that electronic passenger tickets used on the transit system have been compromised until the MBTA can fix security flaws in the system. It further seeks to bar the students from releasing any tools or providing any information that would allow someone to hack the transit system and obtain free rides.

A hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. in U.S. District Court in Boston on the T's request for a temporary restraining order to keep Zack Anderson, RJ Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa from giving a talk at the DefCon conference in Las Vegas on Sunday on The Anatomy of a Subway Hack: Breaking Crypto RFID's and Magstripes of Ticketing Systems:

In this talk we go over weaknesses in common subway fare collection systems. We focus on the Boston T subway, and show how we reverse engineered the data on magstripe card, we present several attacks to completely break the CharlieCard, a MIFARE Classic smartcard used in many subways around the world, and we discuss physical security problems. We will discuss practical brute force attacks using FPGAs and how to use software-radio to read RFID cards. We survey 'human factors' that lead to weaknesses in the system, and we present a novel new method of hacking WiFi: WARCARTING. We will release several open source tools we wrote in the process of researching these attacks. With live demos, we will demonstrate how we broke these systems.

Human factors? So they managed to sweet-talk some T employees to inadvertently help them out.

Anderson told the Register the trio initially contacted the T to offer their help in fixing the vulnerabilities and that they weren't planning to release specific enough details to let somebody else replicate their feats.

Montreal's transit authority is replacing its paper tickets with a CharlieCard-like system. Chris DeWolfe, a reporter at the Montreal Gazette, is writing a story about the new Opus Card (OK, I really have no clue if it'll feature a penguin):

Part of my story will look at how the names of smart cards in other cities have been derived from or have become part of the local pop culture. Naturally, I'm very interested by the CharlieCard.

So, what do you think about the T naming its pass after a character in a song protesting the T's predecessor? I told him the song is such a part of local character, the question is almost more how could the T even think of naming it anything else, but what do I know? You can e-mail Chris with your thoughts on the name or post them here.

Dee Cee reports she and other people who use WageWorks cards (sort of debit cards handed out by their employees) to add value to their CharlieCards haven't been able to do so this month:

... I have been calling every other day to WageWorks and MBTA. WageWorks is apologetic, and tell me there was a system issue with the T kiosks. Hundreds of people have been calling, asking for their money back. The MBTA is denying any fault, saying this is WageWorks' problem. One "customer service" (I use that term loosely, due to the rudeness I got) rep told me it was my own fault for a)using a WageWorks card, and b)waiting for the 1st of the month to update my Charlie Card. ...

Boblothrope reports trying to convert some CharlieTickets into CharlieCards only to be told he couldn't because they were already marked as discounted or something (he got them as not-on-time reimbursements). But he discovered a quick workaround involving adding all of five cents to the tickets, then trading in the new ones you get:

... Maybe if I really want to waste the T's money I'll put each 5 cent transaction on a credit card. ...

Meanwhile, in the "You're kidding, right?" department, state Rep. Denis Guyer wants a law forcing the T to return dollar bills rather than coins to people who put cash in CharlieMachines. Guyer, D-Boonies, could care less that $18 worth of Sacageweas are annnoying - he's looking out after the interests of Crane & Co., a company in his district that makes the paper used to print dollar bills.